SPECIAL REPORT	JANUARY 19, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 3
	Europe's Restless Region Peace is secure in Bosnia, but there are still some nasty surprises in the Balkans By MISHA GLENNY ar will not break out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1998. Until two weeks before the end of 1997, nobody could have made such a prediction with any confidence. Then President Clinton saved the day by ordering U.S. troops to stay in Bosnia after the end of the current mission in June. Had the Americans pulled out, the Europeans would almost certainly have followed suit. And no Western presence would have meant renewed fighting. So Bosnia has won a reprieve. But the Balkans are still cooking. Neighboring Serbia is a diseased state--its economy is all but dead and what is left of the government remains the plaything of a cynical dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, and his Mafia friends. Worse still, in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo tension between the large Albanian majority and the Serbian minority is slipping into bloodshed. In the past year alone, political violence has claimed over 40 lives. If war does break out it will be every bit as tragic as Bosnia. The Clinton decision on Bosnia followed some hard-nosed negotiations with skeptics in Congress. In a smart move designed to snuff out calls for the troops to leave, the President asked Bob Dole, once an opponent of deployment, to accompany him on a Christmas visit to the U.S. forces in Bosnia. Even more important, the President also said the new mission would be open-ended. As a result, diplomats and aid workers throughout Bosnia breathed a collective sigh of relief. The countdown to the June deadline had begun to sound like the timing device on an unexploded bomb. But wise as Clinton's decision was, it has not cleared up the mess in Bosnia and the wider Balkan region. The guns are silent, but civilian implementation of the Dayton peace agreement, signed over two years ago, remains lamentable. Bosnia may in theory be a unified state, but for most practical purposes it remains three separate countries with three different armies and administrations representing three different peoples. Diplomats in the Bosnian capital estimate that Sarajevo itself is now 90% Bosnian Muslim. Relations between Muslims and Croats, joined in one of Bosnia's two entities, the Federation, may be improving, but Mostar, the most enduring symbol of their ghastly conflict, remains a divided city where violence and ethnic hatred are never far from the surface. Elsewhere ethnic cleansing remains a fait accompli: of the over 400,000 expelled as minorities during the war, only 35,000 have had the courage--or foolhardiness--to return to their former homes. And then there is the Serb Republic, Bosnia's second entity. Momcilo Krajisnik, a hardline supporter of the indicted war criminal and former Serbian President Radovan Karadzic, is now engaged in a bitter struggle with Biljana Plavsic, the current President. As a member of the Karadzic leadership during the war, Plavsic was considered one of the most extreme Serb nationalists. But peace has turned her into a pragmatist who is willing to cooperate with both the international community and, to a limited extent, with Croats and Muslims. The outcome of their battle--which could degenerate into civil war among the Serbs--will be decisive for the long-term prospects of the Dayton agreement. If Krajisnik wins, the Serb Republic could become what Deputy High Representative Hans Heinrich Schumacher has called "the North Korea of Europe." Even if Plavsic were to prevail over Krajisnik, it will require many years before Bosnia's leaders will succeed in establishing a working administration, as opposed to the Frankenstein's monster passing for a constitution at the moment. All this means that the Bosnia experience will be long and frustrating for both the international community and for the country's blighted people. But confidence in the future is in short supply at the moment because of developments in neighboring Serbia. Milosevic, not satisfied with having ripped Croatia and Bosnia apart, has now ripped his own country to shreds. What little remains of the economy is run by gangsters, while political disputes are either settled by ballot rigging or guns to the head. Serbia's tiny ally, Montenegro, is getting restless and even showing some signs of wanting to part company with Serbia--a move which could result in the most bloody conflict. But most frightening of all is the deteriorating situation in Kosovo, the southern Serbian province where Albanians outnumber Serbs nine to one. After years of abuse at the hands of the Serbian authorities, some Albanians are now fighting back. The emergence of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which seeks independence for Kosovo, has led to a dramatic increase in political violence. Over 40 people have been killed this year, most at the hands of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Kosovo has been the accident waiting to happen. Unless the international community wakes up to the problem, the accident will be upon us and another, avoidable Balkan war will be the result.
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